New Details Emerge in Matthew Shepard Murder

Six years ago, on a cold October night on the
outskirts of Laramie, Wyo., 21-year-old gay college
student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a
fence and left for dead. He was found 18 hours later
and rushed to the hospital, where he lingered on the
edge of death for nearly five days before succumbing
to his injuries.

The story garnered national attention when the attack
was characterized as a hate crime. But Shepard's
killers, in their first interview since their
convictions, tell "20/20's" Elizabeth Vargas that
money and drugs motivated their actions that night,
not hatred of gays.

While Shepard lay unconscious in a hospital, the
national press quickly arrived in Laramie. Cal
Rerucha, who prosecuted the case, told Vargas the
media descended on Laramie "like locusts."

"We knew in the newsroom the day it happened, this is
going to be a huge story, this is going to attract international interest," said Jason Marsden of "The Casper Star-Tribune."

"I remember one of my fellow reporters saying, 'this
kid is going to be the new poster child for gay
rights," he added. News of Shepard's death sparked
reaction overseas and demonstrations across
America.

"I think a lot of gay people, when they first heard of
that horrifying event, felt sort of punched in the
stomach. I mean it kind of encapsulated all our fears
of being victimized," said writer Andrew Sullivan, a
prominent gay rights advocate.

But as the push for gay rights found new force, so did
a corresponding backlash from anti-gay opponents who
came from out of state to grab a piece of the media spotlight.

Tensions were so high that Shepard's father wore a
bulletproof vest under his suit when he spoke at his
son's funeral service.

"The saddest part of this whole case was at Matthew's
funeral, when they, these people, refused to let
Matthew be buried with dignity," said Rerucha. "I
never saw people that could hate so much."

Killers Both Receive Two Consecutive Life
Sentences

Local residents Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson,
both 21 at the time, were charged with Shepard's
murder. Henderson's case came before the court first.
To avoid the possibility of receiving the death
penalty, he pleaded guilty to murder and kidnapping
and received two consecutive life terms in prison.

McKinney's case went to trial a year after Shepard's
death. He was convicted of felony murder, aggravated
robbery and kidnapping. Before the jury was about to
decide his sentence, he, too, reached a deal that
allowed him to avoid a possible death penalty. Both
men are serving double life sentences in prison.

Authorities asked "20/20" not to disclose the prison location.

While McKinney and Henderson admit to killing Shepard,
both men -- and the man who prosecuted the case -- now
say the real story is not what it seemed.

Many area residents were shocked that the crime was
committed by two young men from their community. But
both McKinney and Henderson came from classically
troubled backgrounds.

Henderson was born to a teenage alcoholic and raised
without a father. He says he saw his mother being
beaten up by a series of boyfriends, some of whom also assaulted Henderson.

McKinney's childhood, too, was less than
picture-perfect. His father, a long-haul trucker, was
rarely home and eventually divorced McKinney's mother,
a nurse who later died as a result of a botched
surgery. McKinney received a malpractice settlement of
nearly $100,000 after his mother's death. He says he
spent most of that money on things like cars and
drugs.

McKinney admits to Vargas that by the time he was 18
he had a serious methamphetamine habit.

Shepard Haunted by Own Difficulties

Despite his strong family life, Shepard had troubles
of his own. His mother, Judy Shepard, says her son's
problems had started three years earlier during a high
school trip to Morocco, where he was beaten and
raped.

"It made him pull within himself. He became withdrawn, depression, panic attacks," she said.

Some of Shepard's friends say he was still a troubled
young man when he enrolled at the University of
Wyoming in the fall of 1998.

Tom O'Connor, known as "Doc," who ran a limousine
service and sometimes drove Shepard, said just days
before Shepard's death, Matt told him he was
HIV-positive and was considering suicide.

One of Shepard's college friends, Tina LaBrie, was
concerned that Shepard's depression might be somehow
connected to involvement with drugs. "He said 'Everywhere I move, it seems like I get sucked into the drug scene,'" LaBrie told Vargas.

Laramie's Dangerous World of Methamphetamine

As a heavy user and a dealer, McKinney was well-known
with the methamphetamine crowd, according to Ryan
Bopp, who was one of McKinney's friends and drug
associates at the time. By the fall of 1998, McKinney
had blown through his inheritance and was now the
parent of a new baby with his girlfriend, Kristen
Price.

"I think he was really torn because it is the
desperation of getting your fix or taking care of your
family," Price said. In the days leading up to the
attack on Shepard, she said, McKinney was using methamphetamine every day.

Bopp, who says he left Laramie and the drug world
behind six years ago, told "20/20" that he and
McKinney had been on a drug binge in the week leading
up to the attack on Shepard.

"Aaron and I had been awake for about a week or so
prior to this whole thing happening ," Bopp said. "We
were on a hard-core bender that week."

Bopp also admits that a week before the murder he was
so desperate for methamphetamine, that he traded
McKinney a .357-Magnum pistol in exchange for one gram
of methamphetamine. McKinney would later use that
weapon to beat Shepard.

The Night of the Crime

McKinney told Vargas he set out the night of Oct. 6,
1998, to rob a drug dealer of $10,000 worth of
methamphetamine. But after several attempts, McKinney
was not able to carry out his plan.

Henderson said he thought if he could keep McKinney
drinking, he'd forget the robbery plan.

But according to McKinney, when he encountered Shepard
at the Fireside Lounge, he saw an easy mark.

McKinney told "20/20" Shepard was well-dressed and
assumed he had a lot of cash.

Shepard was sitting at the bar, McKinney recalls. "He
said he was too drunk to go home. And then he asked me
if I'd give him a ride. So I thought, yeah, sure, what
the hell," according to McKinney.

All three got in the front seat of McKinney's pickup,
and Henderson took the wheel. McKinney told police
that at some point Shepard reached over and grabbed
his leg. In response, McKinney said, he hit him with
his pistol. "I was getting ready to pull it on him
anyway," he said.

McKinney says he asked for, and got, Shepard's wallet,
which had only $30 in it. But even though Shepard
handed over his money, McKinney continued beating
him.

When pressed by Vargas as to why he continued beating
Shepard after he had already taken his wallet,
McKinney said, "Sometimes when you have that kind of
rage going through you, there's no stopping it. I've
attacked my best friends coming off of meth binges."

McKinney says he directed Henderson to drive the truck
to a secluded spot on the outskirts of Laramie so they
could leave Shepard and have time to get away. They
stopped at a wooden buck fence and took Shepard from
the truck.

On McKinney's instructions, Henderson got a rope from
the truck and tied Shepard to a fence post. Henderson
claims at some point he tried, but failed, to stop
McKinney from beating Shepard further.

In a statement to the court, Henderson said McKinney
struck him across the face with the gun when he tried
to stop the continued beating of Shepard.

Henderson retreated to the truck, leaving McKinney
alone with Shepard at the fence. McKinney tells
"20/20" he fears these last blows he dealt Shepard at
the fence were the fatal blows.

New Fracas Leads to Arrest

McKinney took Shepard's wallet and his shoes, got back
in the truck and told Henderson to drive to town. He
says his plan was to burglarize Shepard's apartment.
But when they parked the truck they encountered two
young men who police say were vandalizing cars.
Hostile words led to a fight and for the second time
that night, McKinney went on the attack.

One of the men was struck so hard his skull was
fractured. The injured man's friend retaliated,
slamming McKinney in the head with a small bat.
Everyone fled, just before a police car happened on
the scene.

Sgt. Flint Waters gave chase and grabbed Henderson.
Then he discovered some key evidence that would
later be used to link Henderson and McKinney to the
attack on Shepard.

"I looked in the back of the truck and laying in the
back of the truck was a large-frame revolver. The
thing was huge, like an 8-inch barrel that had blood
all over it. And there was some rope and a coat in
the truck; there was I believe a shoe sitting in the
front. ... Seeing that the gun covered in blood, I
assumed that there was a lot more going on than what
we'd stumbled onto so far," he said.

With that much evidence and McKinney's later
confession, the attack on Shepard was not a hard case
to solve. McKinney and Henderson were charged with
murder. The mystery in this story was not who did it,
but why?

Shepard's Friends Suspect Attack Was
Hate-Motivated

Just hours after Shepard's battered body was
discovered, and before anyone knew who had beaten him, Shepard's friends Walt Boulden and Alex Trout began spreading the word that Shepard was openly gay and that they were concerned the attack may have been a gay-bashing.

Boulden told "20/20" in an interview shortly after the
attack in 1998, "I know in the core of my heart it
happened because he revealed he was gay. And it's
chilling. They targeted him because he was gay."

Prosecutor Rerucha recalls that Shepard's friends also contacted his office. Rerucha told "20/20," "They were calling the County Attorney's office, they were calling the media and indicating Matthew Shepard is gay and we don't want the fact that he is gay to go unnoticed."

Helping fuel the gay hate crime theory were statements
made to police and the media by Kristen Price,
McKinney's girlfriend. (Price was charged with felony accessory after-the-fact to first-degree murder. She later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor interference with police officers.)

Price now says that at the time of the crime she
thought things would go easier for McKinney if his
violence were seen as a panic reaction to an unwanted
gay sexual advance.

But today, Price tells Vargas the initial statements
she made were not true and tells Vargas that McKinney's
motive was money and drugs. "I don't think it was a
hate crime at all. I never did," she said.

Former Laramie Police Detective Ben Fritzen, one of
the lead investigators in the case, also believed
robbery was the primary motive. "Matthew Shepard's
sexual preference or sexual orientation certainly
wasn't the motive in the homicide," he said.

"If it wasn't Shepard, they would have found another
easy target. What it came down to really is drugs and
money and two punks that were out looking for it,"
Fritzen said.

'All I Wanted to Do Was Beat Him Up and Rob
Him'

Asked directly whether he targeted and attacked
Shepard because he was gay, McKinney told Vargas, "No.
I did not. ... I would say it wasn't a hate crime. All
I wanted to do was beat him up and rob him."

But if the attackers were just trying to rob someone
to get a drug fix, why did they beat Shepard so
savagely?

Rerucha attributes McKinney's rage and his savage
beating of Shepard to his drug abuse. "The
methamphetamine just fueled to this point where there
was no control. It was a horrible, horrible, horrible
murder. It was a murder that was once again driven by
drugs," Rerucha said.

Dr. Rick Rawson, a professor at UCLA who has studied
the link between methamphetamine and violence, tells
"20/20" the drug can trigger episodes of violent
behavior.

"In the first weeks after you've stopped using it, the
kinds of triggers that can set off an episode are
completely unpredictable. It can be: you say a word
with the wrong inflection, you touch someone on the
shoulder. It's completely unpredictable as to what
will set somebody off" Rawson said.

"If Aaron McKinney had not become involved with methamphetamine, Matthew Shepard would be alive today," Rerucha said.

Did Matthew Shepard Know His Killers?

Another widely held belief about the case is that
McKinney and Shepard had never met before their
fateful encounter at the Fireside Lounge. But a number
of sources tell "20/20" the two were not strangers.

"Everybody knew Matt Shepard was a partier just like
Aaron, just like the rest of us," said Bopp.

In fact, Bopp said he had seen Shepard and McKinney
together at parties. "Aaron was selling [drugs] and
him and Matt would go off to the side and they'd come
back. And Matt would be doing some meth then," he
said.

Though they frequented the same party scene, McKinney
maintains he had never met Shepard before the night of
the crime and wonders why people might say he had.
"I've never met him. ... Maybe they seen us somewhere
in the same spot or something. I don't know," McKinney
said.

A bartender familiar with the local drug scene, who
asked to be identified only as "Jean," says she was
friendly with Shepard. She also says McKinney and
Shepard knew each other.

When she learned of the beating, she said, she recalls thinking, "It's either money or dope, yeah. He'd be the perfect target especially because Aaron knew him."

Another Laramie resident, Elaine Baker, says she also
saw McKinney and Shepard together in a social
situation. Several weeks before the murder, she spent
a night on the town in Doc O'Connor's limousine with a
group that included both McKinney and Shepard.

"In the back of the limo, there was me, Stephanie,
Doc, Aaron, Matthew Shepard," she said.

As word spread of the attack on Shepard, other people
who knew him also suspected the drug scene might
somehow be involved.

"I really don't think he was in a
methamphetamine-induced rage when this happened. I
don't buy it at all," O'Malley said. "I feel
comfortable in my own heart that they did what they
did to Matt because they [had] hatred toward him for
being gay," he said.

Shepard's mother, Judy, also said she doesn't
buy into theories that the attack was primarily driven
by drugs and money rather than hatred of her son's homosexuality.

"I'm just not buying into that. There were a lot of
things going on that night, and hate was one of them,
and they murdered my son ultimately. Anything else we
find out just doesn't, just doesn't change that fact,"
she said.

Did McKinney Have a Secret Sex Life?

O'Connor had known Aaron McKinney for years. In flush
times, McKinney partied in O'Connor's limos, and, in
fact, McKinney and his girlfriend lived for a while in
an apartment on O'Connor's property.

O'Connor says he never heard McKinney express any
anti-gay attitudes. In his interview with Vargas,
O'Connor reveals his belief that McKinney is bisexual.
"I know of an instance where he had a three-way, two
guys and one gal," he said. "Because he did it with
me."

O'Connor added, "I know he's bisexual. There ain't no
doubt in my mind. He is bisexual."

McKinney's former girlfriend Price says she now
believes that as well. "He was always into trying to
talk me into having a three-way with one of his guy
friends," she said.

In her prison interview with McKinney, Vargas asked
McKinney directly whether he had had any sexual
encounters with men. McKinney said no.

Displaying a strong aversion to homosexual sex was a
tactic McKinney tried at his trial. His lawyers
developed a so-called "gay panic defense," claiming
homosexual abuse McKinney suffered as a child caused
him to overreact to a sexual advance by Shepard and
triggered the violent attack.

Hoping a Wyoming jury would be sympathetic to gay
panic did not pay off. McKinney was found guilty and
wound up with two life sentences, assuring he'll spend
the rest of his life in prison, the same sentence
received by his accomplice Russell Henderson.

"It's really hard for me to talk to Russ," McKinney
said. "To see him in this situation, knowing that I'm
the one that put him here."

But Henderson said he realizes he bears responsibility
for Shepard's death.

"For a long time I thought that his death wasn't my
fault. And then, as time has gone on, I got a better understanding to know that I could have prevented it and I could have stopped it, but I didn't. Matthew died because I didn't stop it," he said.

Henderson also expresses regret and remorse for his
actions that night. "I'm sorry to the Shepard family.
They've had the hardest of all this. I'm sorry to the
nation as a whole because this affected a lot of
people and I wish every day I could change or fix it,"
he said.

Matthew Shepard's Death Led to Enormous
Changes

Shepard's story has been told in documentaries,
television movies, and a play called "The Laramie
Project." The drama is often used in schools, as a
lesson in the insidious workings of hate and
prejudice, and has become one of the most produced
theater pieces in America. There was also a small
screen version of the drama on HBO.

Shepard's mother has created The Matthew Shepard
Foundation, dedicated to promoting tolerance and
diversity, lobbying for hate-crime legislation, and
assuring Matthew's legacy will be a positive one.